Pregnancy outcomes of day-2 versus day-3 embryo transfer in poor responders / 中华男科学杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To investigate whether the day of embryo transfer (day 2 or day 3) affects clinical pregnancy outcomes in poor responder patients.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>We retrospectively analyzed the pregnancy rates of 265 initial fresh cycles of in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer (IVF-ET), all transferred on day 2 (n = 169) or day 3 (n = 96) irrespective of quality because of an extremely low number of available embryos.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>Among the poor responders aged < 35 years, a higher rate of clinical pregnancy was achieved in the day-3 than in the day-2 group (50% vs 32.43% ; RR = 0.65, 95% CI: 0.43 - 0.99), and among those aged years, the two groups showed similar pregnancy outcomes.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>Shortening the time of embryo culture has no obvious benefit for the pregnancy outcome. For the poor responders under 35 years of age, day-3 embryo transfer may afford an even higher rate of clinical pregnancy.</p>

Clinical application of oocyte vitrification in failed testicular sperm extraction cycles: report of 8 cases / 中华男科学杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To evaluate the clinical application value of oocyte vitrification in failed testicular sperm extraction cycles in non-obstructive azoospermia (NOA) patients.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>We retrospectively analyzed the clinical data of 8 women undergoing oocyte frozen-thawing cycles by vitrification because of failed testicular sperm extraction from their NOA husbands and no banked donor sperm on the day of oocyte retrieval. The oocytes were cryopreserved by vitrification with cryotop and thawed 2 months later. The surviving metaphase II (MII) oocytes were injected with the banked donor sperm of the same blood type as the husbands by intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) for fertilization. The rates of oocyte survival, fertilization, cleavage, good embryos and pregnancy were evaluated.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>Sixty oocytes were vitrified and 47 (78.3%) survived after thawing, of which 41 MII oocytes underwent ICSI and 33 (80.5%) of them were fertilized. The rates of cleavage and good embryos were 81.8% (27/33) and 59.3% (16/27) respectively. Fifteen of the embryos were transferred to the 8 patients, with 1.9 +/- 0.8 per cycle, of which 5 (33.3%) were confirmed by ultrasound to have been implanted and 5 resulted in clinical pregnancy (62.5%), all singleton without miscarriage. Three normal boys and 1 normal girl were already born, with the pregnancy time of (39 + 4 +/- 0.4) wk and newborn body weight of (3787.5 +/- 513.7) g, respectively.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>Vitrification of oocytes in failed testicular sperm extraction cycles is a promising technique for preserving female fertility, which, with ICSI of banked donor sperm, may result in satisfactory clinical outcomes.</p>